Hey, happy Wednesday. What is Reagan doing? EATING EVERYTHING SHE CAN GET HER PAWS ON!
Including, but not limited to:
- Bacon grease
- Paper towels
- Coffee grounds
- Dog treats
- Chocolate truffles
- Endurolytes
Our super crafty border collie has taken up a new hobby, called getting into the trash and strewing it all over the kitchen. We got this lovely red trash can from Crate and Barrel as a wedding gift (that’s right, we registered for a trash can, we’re grown-ups).
Even though said trash can has a lid, Reagan has figured out a way to pull on even the smallest amount of slack in the plastic bag that wraps around the can liner, and possibly step on the foot pedal at the same time to get stuff out and chew on it while we’re at work. She even tried it in the middle of the night last week, but I caught her in the act.
This has been going on a couple of weeks now, and we’ve tried eliminating all slack in the plastic bag (Jesse’s now an expert at this), turning the trash can around so that the opening is towards the wall, setting up booby traps to deter her, etc. But all to no avail. We have finally had to resort to leaving the plastic bag down inside the can. Maybe we’ll have to get some sort of puppy lock?
We realize that Reag naturally has endless amounts of energy, and winter gets tough because she is cooped up in the house all day and doesn’t get to go on runs, because we’re stuck at the gym. We’re not as good about getting her out for walks as we should be, so we can’t really blame her for getting bored. Today, however, she must have been feeling extra neglected and/or hungry, because while we were gone she decided to go beyond the trash and climb up on the counter to see what she could find there.
We’ve figured out that she can somehow get all the way on top of the counter, like on all fours. She’s done this once before. At first we were stumped as to how she could get her front legs up and stretch over the sink to get to the window sill where we keep the dog treats out of reach, super impressive. Then, we found some paw prints on the stainless steel sink, placed just so to indicate that she was actually walking on the counter. (I would love to put a go-pro on her and just see how she ninjas around all day). Last time, she ate all of her dog treats from the bowl on the window sill, part of a chocolate bar, and some fortune cookies. The crazy part is, she actually leaves the wrappers on the counter. Amazing.
Today, we didn’t find any visible prints, but there was some dog hair left on the counter, immediately giving her away. She cleaned out the treat bowl, knocked a glass on the floor, and found our stash of chocolate truffles that we had in a box in the corner. In case you’ve ever freaked out over your dog eating chocolate, we’ve looked into it. WebMD tells us that one ounce of milk chocolate per pound of body weight is potentially lethal for dogs. So for medium to large size dogs, they would really have to eat quite a bit to get to a dangerous level. For reference, a standard full-size chocolate bar is around 3.5 oz, and an entire box of Russell Stover chocolates is 11 oz. Needless to say, we did some googling the first time Reagan got into a candy bar, and we were relieved to learn that she shouldn’t be in any real danger.
SO, after scavenging the kitchen counters, she proceeded into the office where she found Jesse’s bike gear bag. He said it was left just slightly open because he had to grab something out of it this morning. She managed to get it opened up, pull a smaller bag out of it which she then took into the living room, and dug around until she found his bottle of endurolyte pills. Somehow popped that sucker open, and helped herself to a few. At least she won’t be getting any cramps after all of her hard work today.
